Half of Britons think 'countryside' is boring

It's true: the tragic remnant of the world not yet concreted over is now generally considered boring by those who need constant entertainment. Read on and I defy you to disagree with the idea that we should not appease such people by building more “attractions”, but rather massacre them and use their bodies as fertilizer.

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More than half of Britons think the countryside is boring and many of them are unable to identify common animals and plants, according to a new survey.

A third of people who were asked said they had never even considered visiting the British countryside.

The survey found one in 10 adults could not identify a sheep, 44% could not identify an oak tree and 83% failed to recognise a bluebell.

When they were shown a picture of a stag, 12% of adults identified it incorrectly as a reindeer.

Professor of Tourism at the University of Surrey John Tribe said: "It is alarming news that over half of the nation thinks the British countryside is boring and there is nothing to do or see there. Maybe this is because in the last decade Britons have preferred to holiday abroad and as a result they have forgotten the UK is abundant with great rural holiday locations."

Sandie Dawe from VisitBritain said: "Britain's countryside is far from boring and we have some of the most famous landscapes from the picturesque Cotswolds to the spectacular views of the Lake District that draw visitors from around the world.

"With more Britons considering a holiday at home this year, it's a great time to get back to nature and get reacquainted with rural Britain. The last decade has seen a rise in competition and it is important to remind Brits on what they are missing out on and what a great free attraction the countryside is."

Three thousand adults took part in the survey which was conducted in March by OnePoll on behalf of Travelodge.

The countryside is indeed boring compared to the cedar forests that the British completely destroyed in order to build ships to fight the French. That's why the countryside exists in the first place, after all.

It's almost hilarious. The British plundered and destroyed several cultures in their "empire" that had flourished while the Brit's ancestors were still living in caves, then milked those cultures for all they were worth, went back home and deforested all their land for a lost cause, then started destroying the environment with their "industrial revolution," then allowed their liberal migration policies to allow the ones they once ruled to come into the country and wreak havoc (you may have ruled us for 200 years, but you didn't expect us to follow you BACK, did you?).

A boring countryside? You having a fucking laugh? That's the least of their problems right now.

The drive from London to Bath is really nice heh - only thing better i've seen so far is the train ride from Zürich to Lugano.

Anyway, Neo-Luddism is a pretty short sighted ideology don't you think? Many of the arguments against the effects of large scale infrastructure are spot on, but (future) technology is the only means of dodging the next major extinction event.

What does Genetic and Planetary engineering coupled with a semi-immortal collective knowledge equate to?

Technology may allow humanity to transcend its inwardly focused existence and spread new forms of life outside the solar system.

Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), like Thoreau, deplored the effects of the new cities on "a world of professional illusionists and their credulous victims." Unlike Thoreau, he did not believe in arrant individualism. He decried the new economy's creation of alienated individuals.

"Freed from his sense of dependence on corporation and neighborhood, the 'emancipated individual' was dissociated and delocalized: an atom of power, ruthlessly seeking whatever power can command. With the quest for financial and political power, the notion of limits disappeared--limits on numbers, limits on wealth, limits on population growth, limits on urban expansion: on the contrary, quantitative expansion became predominant. The merchant cannot be too rich; the state cannot possess too much territory; the city cannot become too big. Success in life was identified with expansion. This superstition still retains its hold in the notion of an indefinitely expanding economy."

He argued that humans, who belong both to the natural world and the artificial world of their own making, are capable of designing wholesome living environments, that cities are as much natural structures as anthills or beaver colonies...

I'd put it down to the industrial revolution. Here in Lancashire towns were mostly farming up til the 1800's, when they were transformed into slum towns with mills attached. These slums still exist, and most of the houses round here are remnants of housing that were meant for workers, and populated by inbreds who indeed think the countryside is boring, not realising that both their accent and culture stem from rural ways and ancient dialects, but choose to live as they do and not recognise this. Probably due to a lack of education and/or money. Countryside in the north is a lot different to countryside in the south however, so I don't believe such a sweeping statement can be made, as in the south the land is used for farming crops and so is quite flat and boring; they dont have the mountains and hills as we do up north.

Ever been to Devon, Dorset, or Kent? No mountains, but plenty of hills.

I always assumed that the "intelligent" population of my public (read: private) school would like the country. However, the most exceptionally intelligent friend I have ever had finds it to be a waste of time, preferring to play "Morrowind", or "Oblivion", for hours, primarily, as he says, "because it looks nice".

Basically, the remains of the natural environment in Britain is generally considered as a commodity to be used and consumed like everything else.

Most of the countryside is heavily managed and subject to intensive farming so it never reaches again a state of "naturalness", because that's not productive in terms of raw material. A friend visiting from Sweden was amazed when he saw mature woodland in England planted in neat rows.

I read some time ago that there's a small patch of private woodland somewhere in England that's kept free of human activity and allowed to grow as it may. Conservationists and some scientists keep its location secret from the general public.

It's near impossible to find anywhere in Britain still in its natural state. It's too small and there's too many people.

I totally agree, a lot of 'nature helpers' or whatever they call themselves really miss the point of such an activity. a lot of 'forests' are just trees grown in neat little rows, as you said, which i find even worse than industrial sites. places like the yorkshire moors or the lake district still have places of bleakness and solitude, but in the next decade or so britain will be a completely changed place, to my extreme grief, as i couldnt love a country more.

i was brought up to love the english countryside by my dad, whom i often went on walks with. i think a lot of people arent introduced to this side of things and just think it a waste of time and would rather play computer games. its also part of the downfall of english culture, and the apparent 'resurgence' of interest is a fallacy; people dont understand the spirit of what was english culture, so they assume drinking real ale instead of lager is going to bring our culture back.

Most people have no idea that such a place exists in Great Britain - their concept of "natural beauty" is probably a TV image of Niagra Falls. Children are not taught about the countryside, neither in the State education system, nor in Public Schools.

Well here are some pictures of the Isle of Skye (off the north west coast of Scotland), all taken during a visit earlier this year, from which you can draw your own conclusions.

Good point, there are some vaguely unspoilt mountainous regions in Scotland and Wales too. The Isle of Skye isn't part of mainland Britain and is too remote and relatively difficult to access to have suffered as badly as the rest of the country.

I suspect as years go by, more and more people (tourists) will want to visit such places as they realise how scarce they've become and therefore inadvertently help destroy them. Already there are massive problems with erosion on hills and mountains as visitor numbers increase. Pretty much anywhere that has the slightest hint of a footpath is fucked. If you've got the money and motivation you can get someone to drag you up Everest nowadays. You know, it's one of those "things you have to do before you die".